Mekong Music
for flute and guitar
I have had the pleasure of collaborating with the film-maker David Wallace on many BBC travel programmes, from ‘Great Railway Journeys’ to ‘Great Journeys’, ‘The Last African Flying-Boat’ and ‘Monsoon’. In the series ‘Great River Journeys’ I wrote a ‘Mekong theme’, in the manner of a simple oriental folk melody, which, on the instigation of Martin Feinstein and Richard Hand, I was able to extend into a concert piece. It takes the form of an episodic fantasy on this melody, which is only stated fully at the work’s conclusion, as if the river were broadening out into a delta which merges with the sea. The music is not intended to be literally pictorial in any sense, but is certainly meant to convey a strong sense of place and atmosphere.
© 1994 Tim Souster